The Core Pieces of a Business Identity
Like a house, you want your business to have a strong foundation. If you pour it wrong, the cracks will come later.
The Foundation of your Business
For a strong foundation, you need to be able to communicate without giving out your personal information. Like a foundation, once you have these pieces in place, they should be permanent.
- Domain name
- Business Website
- Professional Phone Number
- Business Email Address
We provide each of these pieces at no cost with no strings attached. It’s our hope to give you a strong foundation so that we can grow with you.
The Walls and Windows
Next, your house needs some structure. Walls, windows, doors. As you continue to build, you’ll layer on:
- Registered agent
- Entity (like an LLC or corporation)
- A federal tax ID (also called an EIN)
- A permanent business address
Once you have these pieces in place, you have the liability protection and credibility that comes from officially forming an entity with the state. We can provide you with each of these items.
Additions and Guest Rooms
As your business grows, you’ll need more room to spread out. Maybe you’ll want to introduce new brands or expand into new markets. When you want more, Northwest can help you:
- Apply for a federal trademark
- Purchase multiple domain names
- Register for Doing Business As (DBA) names
- Expand your business into new states
When you start a business, you start making defining choices right away. Early choices harden fast. At Northwest, we’ll make sure your business is ready to hit the ground running on day one.
Protect Your Privacy with Identity Services
How you decide to build your business identity can protect or expose your privacy.
We’ve seen many unprepared small business owners start doing business through their personal identity instead of through, well, their business. This looks like:
- Listing yourself as your own registered agent
- Using your home address as your business address on public documents
- Handing out your SSN to vendors or landlords
- Posting your home address rather than a virtual office address on your website
- Selling things on your social media channels instead of a secure website
- Listing your cell phone number on your website
When you’re in the early days of starting a business, these mistakes are understandable—but not always reversible. What goes online usually stays online.
That’s where we can help. When you form your LLC with Northwest or hire Northwest to be your registered agent, you’ll be ready to start doing business with confidence right away. And when you hire Northwest, you don’t have to opt into privacy protections. You get Privacy by Default®, which means we’ll never sell your data and we’ll automatically minimize your exposure whenever possible with our Identity Services.
An Identity Owned by You, Not Us
We’re independently owned. No shareholders. No third-party “partners.” We don’t answer to anyone but you. We love being independent, so we’ve built all of our services with independence in mind. We want you to own your intellectual property, so that even if you decide to part ways with us, you can take it with you.
Here’s what that looks like:
- A website built on open-source software that belongs to you, not built on another company’s proprietary platform.
- A domain you can keep for the life of your business, even if you decide to switch domain registrars.
- A private phone number that belongs to you and keeps your personal number private.
- Custom email addresses ending in a shared domain.
Why All-in-One Matters for Your Business
When you use a patchwork of different companies and vendors to put together your business, you end up with multiple logins and invoices, plus platforms that don’t work well together. With Northwest, you can manage every aspect of your business—from paperwork to your website to EIN obtainment—all within one account.
We don’t outsource our services—everything we offer is built in-house. It’s a key part of our Manifesto. It takes longer this way, but it means we have more control. And that means you have more control.
Northwest Business Identity Service
When you hire Northwest to start your business, you’ll get instant access to:
- Articles of Organization or Incorporation filed with the state
- One year of registered agent service
- A business address for public documents
- A business domain name
- A pre-built, open-source website with SSL security
- A professional email address
- A second number that routes to your existing device
- Corporate Guides® who can answer your questions
- Privacy by Default®
This is your foundation. We have plans for all our products that grow as your business grows. When You Want More, we’ll be ready to help with trademarks, foreign registrations, DBAs, virtual office service, EINs, multiple domain names, and any other filing you’ll ever need to do.
Get a Business Identity
Identity Services FAQs
The identity of your business and your brand cover much of the same ground, but your identity is wider in scope. A brand is the story a company tells the public about itself and the feelings it tries to evoke, while the identity of your business encompasses much more than that—it’s all of the defining qualities and details about a business, not just the ones used for marketing.